Mimi R. Koehl

Mimi A. R. Koehl
Alma mater	Gettysburg College and Duke University
Awards	MacArthur Fellows Program
Scientific career
Fields	Marine biology
Doctoral advisor	Stephen A. Wainwright

Mimi A. R. Koehl is an American marine biologist, biomechanist, and professor at University of California, Berkeley, and head of the Koehl Lab. She was a MacArthur Fellow in 1990.

Education

M. A. R. Koehl graduated from Gettysburg College magna cum laude, with a B.A. in biology, and Duke University with a Ph.D. in zoology, where she studied with Stephen A. Wainwright. She was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Friday Harbor Laboratories, University of Washington, where she studied with Richard R. Strathmann, and at University of York, where she studied with John Currey.

Research

Koehl broadly studies how body structure and physical environment affect an organism's mechanical function in nature, looking across many levels of biological organization. Scientific techniques utilized in Koehl's laboratory range from fluid and solid mechanics to ecological quadrat sampling.

Selected publications

• Koehl, M.A.R. and M.G. Hadfield. 2004. "Soluble settlement cue in slowly-moving water within coral reefs induces larval adhesion to surfaces". J. Mar. Systems,
• Koehl, M.A.R. 2004. "Biomechanics of microscopic appendages: Functional shifts caused by changes in speed". J. Biomech. 37:789-795.
• Koehl, M.A.R. 2003. "Physical modelling in biomechanics". Phil Trans. Roy. Soc. Lond. B 358:1589–1596.
• Koehl, M.A.R., J.R. Koseff, J.P. Crimaldi, M.G. McCay, T. Cooper, M.B. Wiley, and P.A. Moore. 2001. "Lobster sniffing: Antennule design and hydrodynamic filtering of information in an odor plume". Science 294:1948–1951
• Koehl, M.A.R., K.J. Quillin, and C. Pell. 2000. "Mechanical design of fiber-wound hydraulic skeletons: The stiffening and straightening of embryonic notochords". Am. Zool. 40:28-41.
• "The Fluid Mechanics of Arthropod Sniffing in Turbulent Odor Plumes", Chemical Senses 2006 31(2):93-105

Awards and honors

The Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology Division of Comparative Biomechanics has named the annual best student oral presentation the “Mimi A.R. Koehl and Steven Wainwright Award”[1]

• Member of the National Academy of Sciences
• Borelli Award, American Society of Biomechanics
• 1990 MacArthur Fellows Program
• Presidential Young Investigator Award, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Guggenheim Fellow
• Fellow, California Academy of Science
• Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar
• Rachel Carson Lecture, American Geophysical Union, 2006
• John Martin Award, American Society of Limnology and Oceanography
• Honorary Degree, Bates College
• Muybridge Award, International Society of Biomechanics
• The Graduate School Distinguished Alumni Award Duke University